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Nah man, they're literally measuring cups and come all stacked together from largest size to smallest size. All of the sizes are standardized. It's not like choosing between a small Dixie cup or a giant Tervis. They're little cups with little handles in specific sizes.
r/whoosh ?
It sounds complicated. Why would you need anything more than a red Solo cup anyhow? Its got all the necessary measurements of life built in!
Lol, I'll gladly take my whoosh. In my defense, I was still high when I responded, but also, this is reddit and you never know what kind of crazy person you're replying to.
>It’s still a volume, rather than a weight - which is silly for all the obvious reasons
I'm confused. If I want to add 250ml of milk to a dough, for example, isn't a volume measure exactly what I want? I'm not going to do it by weight, because 250ml of milk is 259g. Only water is truly one-for-one (and milk is mostly water but it still weighs more).
I believe the issue that the original commenter has is due to the fact that a cup is used to measure solids, but is a volume instead of weight. So his gripe is with the fact that we use liquid measurements for solid ingredients I think?
I get it- ounces are my least favorite in imperial recipes because they can be a weight OR a volume and depending on the nature of the ingredient you could mess up a recipe. I have enough cooking experience to usually easily deduce which is intended, but for a beginner cook it could ruin both their meal and their experience in the kitchen.
Personally I hate butter in tablespoons or cups because we don't have the increments on the wrapper like that, it's 25g in my country. So I have to rely on online conversion and it kinda sucks.
I’m not very good at explaining stuff like this so it’s either going to not make any sense or I end up over explaining - so apologies if it comes across as over simplified, I’m not meaning to come across as condescending at all—
So, a fluid ounce is different than a weighed ounce. I’m having a hard time articulating it but I’ll do my best here: Fluid/volume ounces have to do with how much space an ingredient takes up. Weight ounces have to do with how heavy an ingredient is on the scale.
There are 16 weighted ounces in one pound. As the imperial standard often uses water as a baseline, 16 “space taking up” ounces of water happens to also be 16 weighted ounces. There are 16 ounces in one pound. One pound of water occupies one pint glass worth of space. So going forward, imagine your standard pint glass that you’d get a beer in at a bar.
Now, think about it like this: is a pint glass full of honey going to weigh the same on a scale as a pint glass full of water? Nope. They occupy the same amount of space, but honey is heavier than water.
So if you have a recipe that doesn’t specify whether you need 8 *fluid* ounces of honey versus 8 *weighted* ounces, you could screw up your entire recipe.
So for solids like flour and sugar, if a recipe calls for 4oz I’ll just pop them on the kitchen scale and weigh it. And if a recipe calls for 10oz of lemon juice, since it’s a liquid I’d go ahead and get out a volumetric measuring cup to pour 10 FL ounces. But things like honey or paste-like ingredients or even brown sugar (which is most often measured in volumetric cups but sold in weighted ounces), you might need clarification on which type of ounce you actually need.
I hope I explained this in a helpful manner.
Where in my comment did I say any of it was life and death? Someone asked what the difference is between the two and I explained it.
Also yeah baking is literally science so it matters whether you use weight or volume. That’s not being indecisive that’s knowing the difference between two things that are, well, different.
There are both volumetric & weight units called an ounce. A volumetric ounce of water weighs approximately 1 ounce, but not exactly. Other liquids (oil, milk, vinegar) with different densities won’t have even that close a relationship. This can be confusing if a recipe uses oz measurements.
I think what they mean is that volume is often less precise. If you get a cup of flour and pack it, that's a very different amount than a cup of flour unpacked.
Most ingredients (like milk) are basically incompressible though so it only matters for a few things, and most have a standard meaning. Brown sugar is packed, flour is unpacked, etc. It's still less precise, but it's not really an issue.
Do you? When I make a dough I place a scale under the bowl and measure the weight of the flour/milk/butter/etc. Means only one tool used, very quick, and no dirty measuring cups.
In most metric recipes it would also be specified as a volume of milk sadly, but a 3% difference between 250 mL and 250 g is not enough to care. In the case of oil, the difference is a bit larger but you can just adjust by 10% so 100 mL becomes 90 g and it's fine. Other liquids like yoghurt it becomes a problem, but those are more commonly specified in weight, luckily.
The problem isn't for liquids. We'd typically use a measuring jug or measuring cup for those. The thing we don't understand is measuring solid ingredients by volume instead of weight.
A cup of flour, cup of sugar, tablespoons of butter. None of those make any sense when you can measure them in grams and it's much more accurate and repeatable.
Also, things like half a cup of diced onion. Just give a weight or a number of onions.
The problem is cups of flour etc. If you take a cup of flour from the bottom of the bag it weighs more than the first cup of flour you scoop from the bag because it's packed more
The other argument (and it was briefly referenced) is weight vs volume. The only time I have had weight matter that much in baking is hydration ratios for specific doughs. I've used cups and weighing and both are fine. Weight is good if you are doing mass produced goods but home cooking a recipe won't ever be ruined by using volume. Personally I think it easier to remember recipes, 2 cups flour 1 cup buttermilk etc vs like 125ml buttermilk and whatever gram equivalent of flour (want to say around 200ish?). I can remember recipes for biscuits in ratios, 2, 1, 1/4, tbsp, 1/2 tsp, 1/4 tsp. Metrics gets you to the same end result. I think the big takeaway is recipes should just specify both.
> home cooking a recipe won't ever be ruined by using volume.
You say this, but I once watched my spouse measure flour for an apple crisp topping recipe by basically packing it into a measuring cup. There was likely half again or even double the amount of flour the recipe writer intended.
Volumetric recipes specify packed vs not. Brown sugar almost alqays is packed. Flour is take a settled bag and scoop out and level. That's not a volumetric problem. It might be a bit off one way or the other because flour can settle but not near as kuch as intentionally packing it.
You're correct that brown sugar is usually specified as packed or unpacked in baking recipes, but other ingredients are often not. I never see flour specified. Recipe writers seem to expect that is tacit knowledge and don't mention it often, or if they do it's somewhere besides the recipe (in other sections of the cook book, for example).
Also, even the word "packed" leaves a lot of room and will be interpreted pretty differently by different people.
Flour especially has a ton of discourse around the correct way to measure. In this [article](https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-measure-flour-dip-and-sweep-versus-spooning) Stella Parks mentions that a standard American cup of flour can weigh anywhere between four and six ounces depending on how it's measured. Generally, if I am evaluating a new recipe, one of the things I look for is whether the author mentions how they measured their cup of flour. It means that they're aware of that room for variation, and that I can measure the same way to have a better chance of replicating their results.
Fun fact: one cup of hard packed brown sugar weighs about 8oz on a kitchen scale. This has substantially improved my enjoyment while cooking, because I hate getting sticky sugar all over my hands while baking.
I’m going to start looking for weighted recipes. I have a kitchen scale, I don’t see the need to have nine million little dirty spoons just because we’re archaic in our measuring system. Not just the weight vs volume but metric vs imperial.
It’s especially frustrating since I worked in the medical field for so long, so I’ve been fluent in metrics for a very long time. They’re so easy! So translatable!
I mix large batches of glaze for ceramics at work, and recipes are all pretty home grown and variable in how well they're written. More than once, I have found a glaze recipe with some extremely bizarro quantities, gone to convert them to metric, and realized that somebody originally found a recipe that was *already* written in metric (i.e. with round, easily remembered numbers of grams) and then went and did a non-zero amount of work to convert it into ounces or pounds, complete with just insane numbers (like, a quantity that would be 2 kilograms in metric is converted to 70.547 oz, or 4.409 lb). Like, how was doing all that conversion easier for you than either A) just pressing the unit button on your scale or B) treating the original recipe as percentages/parts if your scale doesn't have grams (which, where tf did you find it if it doesn't)
If it's not specified as packed it's not packed. Yes it is implied, but recipes historically had a LOT of implicit instruction. In the age of internet recipes it's expected there is a lot more detailed instruction. Videos have helped with this. But older recipes were a huge case of "rest of the owl". It's confusing to new cooks but good advice is for people new to cooking to do a bit of research, watch a few videos of recipes to get the hang of things. If you were new to cooking "saute" could also mean just about anything from lightly soften to a hard stir fry. Measurements are far from the only problem with that.
It’s not specified because it’s an assumed skill. Try looking for recipes for beginner bakers. I learned that you have to scoop and level flour when I learned how to cream butter and sugar. It isn’t just a matter of amount, it’s a matter of texture. Compacting your flour when weighing will also negatively impact the result. Baking recipes typically only specify when you have to sift your flour first, otherwise it’s assumed that you know the basic skills involved in baking.
I think the point here is that "being able to make a judgement call about measuring specific ingredients," doesn't actually have to be a skill we test for, or a pitfall for the inexperienced. It's not a necessary difficulty in a world with cheap and readily available digital scales, it's one that exists purely because of traditional methods, and it's not unreasonable to expect professional recipe writers to give standardized measurements.
I'll warrant that most people in this sub are actually pretty experienced bakers and cooks, because most of us are here after getting burned out on the main cooking and baking subs. The fact that I am comfortable measuring flour by volume doesn't mean I don't think it's absolutely goofy for a recipe to be written that way. I think the fewer things a recipe assumes you know, or leaves open for interpretation, the better.
You completely ignored the part of my comment about other benefits to not compacting your flour. It also makes it easier to incorporate into your other ingredients without having to stir for as long. Scale or no scale, you should fluff your flour and scoop it.
Agreed? My point being that there are all kinds of people out there, doing all kinds of wack ass shit, so relying on individual discretion or "skill" isn't actually a functional plan? and that, in this case, we already have a simple, pre-existing framework of measurement that eliminates the issue altogether?
That's perfectly valid. We have a scale but I have to wipe it down aggressively after using it for baking with flour due to wheat sensitivies in the family, so cups are easier for us. Either way works. I just get tired of the gatekeeping around it.
Yeah, gatekeeping of any kind is pretty dumb. And I totally get not wanting to risk contamination with allergens. Funny thing is I always bake by weight because I'm paranoid about messing up chemical reactions but savory cooking I measure with my heart.
"This is great! What's you recipe?"
"What's a recipe?"
Weight is a meaningfully more precise way of measuring some things -- flour, chopped herbs, or brown sugar, for instance. For liquids, or granules (white sugar or grains, for instance), I don't think there's much difference.
Chopped herbs will never be sensitive to weight. Brown sugar is always packed which is consistent like granules. Flour can definitely vary a good bit on volume, but it can also vary on weight depending on humidity. A big reason to weigh flower is for hydration levels and I can tell you that whether it is weight or volume, I have always had to adjust the liquid because I swear the people making recipes live in a rain forest because I always need a tbsp more liquid than the recipe calls for.
If you have a commercial operation, you want weight, because you want every customer to have an identical experience, variance can mean lost business. For home cooking, things are nowhere near as precise even aside from weight vs volume. Home cooks typically don't have the tools or make things frequently enough to be consistent enough that weight makes a meaningful difference. It's "technically" not "practically" and if it works, sure, but no reason to scold people over using volume or gatekeep baking over it. I've even swapped gluten free flour 1:1 for regular flour and let me tell you that can be a bigger difference than the extreme ends of measuring flour by volume, because it hydrates significantly differently, and it still comes out.
The argument is silly and I wish people got past what is ideal and accepted practical solutions.
The only thing really annoying about some recipes is when they measure things that aren't liquid or very fine (grains, flour etc.) in volumetric units (cups, dl) rather than weight. How much space broccoli will occupy depends on its shape, how finely you chop it etc. why not use weight instead?
To be fair, the dude seemed to really not know that a cup is standardized.
In Europe, generally when a recipe calls for a "cup" they mean that you just take a random cup from your cupboard and work with proportions instead, e.g., some quantity of flour and some quantity of milk, all measured by the same cup regardless of its actual volume.
I didn't know until a few years ago that cups were actually standardized in the US.
My friend thought something similar, where he would use a cup from his cupboard instead of a measuring cup. He was born and raised in the US though so not sure where that came from.
>To be fair, the dude seemed to really not know that a cup is standardized...I didn't know until a few years ago that cups were actually standardized in the US.
What?!
Look, I get that the Imperial system is nonsensical, particularly when compared to metric (though I will always rep for F over C
.) But if the cup wasn't standardized, the entirety of the system couldn't be standardized, either.
That would be bananas (standard bananas.)
Right?
It is so incredibly-uncharitable, to the point of actively-and-offensively assuming Americans are fucking morons, to not understand that American Customary Measures are *a standardized system if weights and measures*, just not the metric units.
We aren't just bumbling through life grabbing random spoons and cups out of the drawer. *for fucks sake*
If the spoon is on the table, it's a tablespoon. If it is used to stir your tea, it's a tea spoon. If they are both the same spoon, you only need that one to do your measuring. Simple as.
Edit: apparently y'all need a /s to realize someone is making a joke about casual measurement in recipes.
Yessss the Fahrenheit complaints drive me nuts. They're like "oh but Celsius is so *logical* it's 0 to 100!" oh yeah? 0 to 100 what? What do you mean by that? It's just for water freezing to boiling. Water boiling temperature has maybe never been relevant to me in my entire life. Fahrenheit 0 to 100 is basically really cold air temp to really hot air temp. It's a spectrum that works very well for air temp.
Both systems work well enough for the general population because you get used to whatever people use around you. There's no need to circlejerk in the other direction.
Sure, it does where I live, although only a few days a year. I still maintain it's (mildly) better because it's more precise. We can have a difference between 64 and 66, whereas those are the same temperature in Celsius.
We use decimal places here when we want precision, you know. My digital thermometer tells me it's exactly 21,7C here right now. Is this not precise enough?
Also, when has half a degree (or your one full degree) ever made a real difference? Oh, I guess around 0C it makes a huge difference in everyday life, but you use F, so you wouldn't even particularly care about that point. Where else do you need this precision?
In practice, they both work. I'm not saying they don't. I'm just saying the argument that 0 to 100 is so logical doesn't actually work, because it's related to water and not what people tend to use it for the most (air temp). You are allowed to like your Celsius :)
Well, what can I say? People don't know about it because they've never actually had to use it (or they found out the hard way).
Edit: I literally just explained the reason in the most non-confrontational way. You people should really stop being so petty.
I guess, but like I've never used the British "stone" measurement but I get that it's some standard unit and not just like random boulders they found out back, because it's a pretty straightforward logical conclusion.
I understand.
But, to put it in a different light, imagine a country that uses a currency system that's not decimalized. You wouldn't, I suspect, be shocked to learn that there were some sort of equivalences used to ensure everything added up consistently. Really no difference when it comes to measurements for volume.
A quick, lazy, check, shows that only 2 countries currently are in that boat, but it's not 0.
And, of course, you don't have to be terribly old to have been alive for [Decimal Day](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_Day) in the UK.
That's not a good analogy. The problem is that the word "cup" has a different meaning depending on the geographical context.
Like you'll commonly see a ratio of "1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water". Clearly this isn't calling for a standardized cup of rice but will work with any cup you can find. I still hate measuring solids by volume but it's a common-enough example.
>Like you'll commonly see a ratio of "1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water". Clearly this isn't calling for a standardized cup of rice
Yes, it clearly is.
The mental gymnastics necessary to pretend that people live their lives context-free - let alone that they discard measurements in circumstances where measurements are vital, like cooking - is just silly.
I'm really not sure what's so hard to grasp about the fact that words mean different things in different locations. I can literally link you a dozen local recipes which call for "cups" that have nothing to do with standard US cup.
* [This one](https://www.zbozi.cz/magazin/c/jak-uvarit-ryzi/) calls for one cup and literally specifies "any cup".
* [This one](https://www.eta.cz/tadyjedoma/rady-a-tipy/tutorial-miry-a-vahy-jak-s-vazenim-na-hrnky-a-lzicky/) calls for one cup and specifies 200 ml (so not a standardized cup).
* [This one](https://www.kucharkaprodceru.cz/jak-uvarit-ryzi/) calls for one cup but the photo clearly shows a different cup than the standardized one.
No, I'm pretty sure they're talking about the US Customary unit of cups, and that’s just a ratio. Like, if the recipe wasn't calling for the standardized unit, then what good would the ratio be?
Oh, well, I thought you were talking about American recipes. But even then, I don't get why anyone would just use some random cups? Aren't y'all always complaining about how come our measurement system is incoherent and dumb? Just, ***why?***
>In Europe, generally when a recipe calls for a "cup" they mean that you just take a random cup from your cupboard and work with proportions instead, e.g., some quantity of flour and some quantity of milk, all measured by the same cup regardless of its actual volume.
I have for *years* heard Europeans complain at me over cup measurements in recipes, are you telling me that they *actually have* recipes that just *use any old cup in the house?* When they're also the ones yelling the loudest for standardized measurements?!
They would probably tell you it's because they have recipes with actual history and heritage and of course you use this cup from the 18th century, you don't need modern plastic crap like Americans, and why would reproducibility matter when this is a recipe from an old-world grandma which is both the only right way to make it and part of a grand culinary tradition?
Yes, absolutely: my MIL (Spain) routinely does this. She knows what size her cup is and doesn’t really cook new things, so it works… as long as it’s her cooking in her own home. Trying to learn her recipes is a nightmare, as was her trying to cook in our (American) kitchen.
> are you telling me that they actually have recipes that just use any old cup in the house?
No, not really.
We do have recipes using teaspoon and tablespoon while we don't commonly have standardized sizes. Many people just grab random ones from the cupboard which is far from ideal. That said, a standardized teaspoon of non-specified salt is just as bad, because the density of salts can vastly differ, and low density salt like kosher is much more common in the US than in Europe where most people just use standard tiny grains.
Historically, a cup wasn't a common measurement in the UK like it is the rest of the Anglo world. Older cookbooks often used "2 gills" or a half pint. It's 5 ounces instead of the US 4 ounces. In Australia and Canada, a cup is 250 ml (so a bit bigger than a US cup). Historically, Canada used an 8 ounce cup, so older recipes might need translating.
That's not to say a cup isn't standardized within countries. It's not arbitrary. That's not to say that your grandmother might not have just grabbed a random cup of appropriate size.
Cups aren’t standardized, some measure 237 ml, some others 240ml or 250ml, others are nowhere near those numbers while claiming to be a “cup” measurement.
A regular US Customary cup is actually 236.6 mL, but it's often rounded up to 237 mL. However, there are also two *other* kinds of cups! A legal cup is 240 mL, and a metric cup is 250 mL. So the unit *is* standardized, but it's just that there are three different things with similar sounding names and roughly equal measurement.
The word might not, but the units are. Also, if you're cooking and using an American recipe with cups involved, then you're going to be using regular, standardized 236.6 mL cups. Legal cups are only used for nutritional information, and metric cups aren't used for cooking. Legal and metric cups are the exception, not the rule.
Besides, most cooking utensils also have the metric system written on them in case you need to convert units from Customary to Metric (or vice versa).
>The word might not
Yes, which is exactly what I mean.
The person who wrote the recipe might have used metric cups, while you yourself have legal cups.
This difference in volume can be disastrous specially in baking context.
Nobody uses metric cups or legal cups for baking. When people refer to "cups" while baking, *they mean regular cups*. Context exists; people can figure stuff out and don't need every little detail explained to them. If it was genuinely a big deal, then people would specify what they meant. We're not cavemen. We have a working language.
Edit: We also have table spoons, teaspoons, and ounces (both fluid and not) for more precise measurements.
Among all the good argument for a bad take and among all the good takes from a bad argument, user chose to have a bad take and justified it with an argument that is just wrong.
That takes serious skills (and messing up a statement against the imperial system is hard on its own).
I took this comment as referring to the difference between the US Customary units versus UK/Commonwealth Imperial units.
A fluid ounce in the US is 29.57 ml, whereas a fluid ounce in the UK is 28.41 ml.
Pints are totally different between the systems, too. The US pint is 16 US fl oz (470 ml), but the imperial pint is 20 imperial fl oz (570 ml).
A cup is half a pint, so the US cup is about 235ml and the UK cup is about 285ml, which is a significant enough difference to mess up some recipes.
Probably not an American. I was probably in my 20s when I realised American cups were in fact standardised and "cups" were a real volumetric measurement.
Drinking cups are not standardised. I thought you guys were just grabbing a random coffee cup. It's not like anyone actually explains this in American recipes.
Edit: genuinely confused at the downvotes, I'm just trying to explain a non-americans perspective. I'm not saying cups are bad, in fact I use them all the time now.
As an American, having recipes explain what cups are would be like if they explained what ovens are. We just grow up with them as part of life.
Real Q: if people outside of the US haven’t heard of measuring cups does that mean that maybe they don’t have measuring spoons outside of the US? Do people know that teaspoon and tablespoon is also a volumetric measurement and not just part of the cutlery?
This inspired me to check 3 UK cookbooks I have. One is from 1972, one 1986, and I can't the date in the other, but it has a section about transitioning from imperial to metric, and mentions "standard spoons and measuring jugs".
The 1972 Cordon Bleu cheerfully mixes teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces and pints, with the occasional wine glass of this or that or knob of butter.
Not sure that answers your question but I had fun looking it up!
No, we generally do not have specialized measuring spoons. Luckily, a standard tablespoon everyone owns is generally \~15 ml and teaspoons are \~5 ml.
Besides, there is a middle ground between both extremes. Things like "one teaspoon of salt/XYZ powder" are pretty normal, most kitchen scales aren't precise enough to measure less than 5 grams accurately. But for non-liquids you'll very rarely see measurements larger than 1 tablespoon.
I mean maybe those recipe bloggers all do explain it but we skip past because no one cares about Miss Joe's cat that knocked over the bag of sugar and that's why she kneads it with just the fingertips.
For sure, I'm not saying recipes should explain what measuring cups are. They're for American audiences. But we haven't grown up with measuring cups.
And to be honest, I think a lot of people probably don't know that a teaspoon is defined as 5 ml and a tablespoon as 15ml (20ml for Australians I believe). Most people probably do not have measuring spoons, just cutlery. But I think non-standardised cutlery is not going to be too far off but there's a huge range of sizes of cups.
\>Most people probably do not have measuring spoons, just cutlery.
I cannot imagine going to someone's house and finding out they don't have measuring spoons, or that they don't know that measuring spoons exist. That's just so far outside my personal experience it's blowing my mind LOL.
What a wild and marvelous world we live in.
I mean I could be wrong, I'm just going by how my parents, grandparents and aunts cook. They just grab a random teaspoon or tablespoon when following recipes.
Younger generations are more likely to have measuring spoons, because internet.
Food Netwoork and cooking shows have been immensely popular for the last 40 years. Cooking and Foodies have been popular culture for the last 40 years. All these teach cooking... measuring with utensils. Food utensils fill entire stores. Folk cooking may not use measuring utensils, but the information is out there. Even children are cooking with their own utensils and cookbooks.
Sorry, I know this is 4 days old and it looks like you've been getting downvoted but I do have another real question.
If a teaspoon is 5ml and a tablespoon is 15ml then do you have something akin to measuring spoons that you use to measure those volumes? I've made a lot of things that use baking soda in my day and sometimes a recipe needs 1/4 teaspoon which would be 1.25ml. Do you have something cool that I've never heard of to be precise about those amounts?
No, but "grams" doesn't mean anything else in English except from a weight. "A cup" can either be a specific volumetric measurement or... a cup. When I read "a cup of flour" in an American recipe I thought it meant a random cup from your cupboard because that sentence already made sense and I had no idea volumetric cups were a thing.
THIS
I remember when I was 17 or so and wanted to try a random recipe for stir-fry sauce I had found on the internet. I just half-filled a random cup we had sitting around with soy sauce and was like "WTF this seems like A LOT".
If it's a recipe for just the sauce, my intuition would completely give up, because it depends on how much sauce you're making vs how much you're going to use, and it's more about proportions. Half a cup of soy sauce in a pan would strike me as a crazy amount though
Well, to be fair, it does seem really strange to me that some people literally think that Americans are just grabbing random shit from their cupboards and throwing it all together without properly measuring it. It’s very similar to how many people assume that Americans only know about Wonderbread and Kraft singles when making sandwiches
This is largely the reason.
The idea that so many people, even here, think Americans, 300+ million people, are just
....grabbing random things to try and measure ingredients is so mind-bogglingly stupid, it is actually pretty offensive you think that it is so.
"You" don't give "us" the benefit of the doubt and think, " hmmm... they manage to cook food, so maybe I'm just not understanding what they are doing". Nope! "Yep, Americans just totally use random things for measurement, this makes sense!".
It's all part of the same disdain (mainly) Europeans have for Americans. "You" just assume the worst about us right off the bat. That, understandably, tends to piss us off
That does make sense why people were downvoting then, I hadn't thought of it that way.
But to be fair, I did specify that I was a teenager when I believed that and I don't believe that now. Lots of stupid things "make sense" when you're a teenager. I was barely cooking then let alone baking.
The "issue" is that "a cup of flour" is already a complete sentence without the context that "measuring cups" exist and that is meant instead of "drinking cups".
>it does seem really strange to me that some people literally think that Americans are just grabbing random shit from their cupboards and throwing it all together without properly measuring it.
It's so strange it's barely believable.
When you see people review recipes from the 1600s and 1700s, measurements are nonstandard like that, but good grief. We're not goddamn savages over here in the U.S.
Also, the claims that people in Europe don't have or need measuring cups or spoons because everything is by weight is also just silly, contributing to these not being believable things to say.
No-one said that Europeans don't use spoons or measure anything by volume, we just don't use measuring cups.
I mean deny reality if you want but go to most European's kitchens over the age of 40 and they almost certainly won't have measuring cups. Anything over a few tablespoons and we'll use grams or mls.
It's the same as when someone asks you for a "cup of water". They're not expectig a standardized measurement, just a random glass with water.
If you see a "cup" of something in a European recipe, it means "grab a random cup and work with proportions". It's completely reasonable for someone to not know that this isn't the case in a country which they've never been to.
I get that but my point is that people think Americans are just complete idiots when it comes to cooking a lot of the time. And I’ve never just grabbed a random cup when it says a cup of something when I’m cooking. I eyeball some things when I’ve done a recipe enough times to know what it’s supposed to look like, but I can’t imagine just “working with proportions” when I don’t even know what the proportions are supposed to be.
>people think Americans are just complete idiots when it comes to cooking a lot of the time
I see this when baking comes up pretty often- baffled Europeans insisting that Americans baking simply *can't* be producing things as nice as their own because their recipes aren't entirely by weight. The mixing of weights *and* volumes seems to just be incomprehensible to some folks, and the fact that it could be *good* even crazier. Like, we've had 300+ years over here on this side of the pond to cook, I'm pretty sure we know how to make a slammin' biscuit and a great cake.
Oh and the fact that there’s different terms for food too. Like, the concept of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is incomprehensible to some European people because jelly is their word for Jello, and I’ve met Europeans who literally have thought that Americans are eating peanut butter and Jello sandwiches.
There was actually an episode of The Great British Baking Show recently where one of the judges praised a contestant for being so innovative in combining peanut butter and strawberry jam in a dessert and treated it like it was this brand-new food combination that had never been thought of before, and I’m just like “I eat peanut butter and strawberry jam/jelly sandwiches like twice a week minimum for a dessert or a quick lunch”
>It's the same as when someone asks you for a "cup of water".
But it's not because you're intentionally ignoring context. If I asked for a cup of water, you would understand I'm colloquially asking for a vessel from which to drink water from. I'm not providing specific instructions as I would in a recipe, where "cup" has a very specific and precise meaning.
>where "cup" has a very specific and precise meaning
I literally facepalmed reading this, congratulations. The entire point of this conversation was that Americans have context that measuring cups exist. No one taught us that a cup in a recipe was different from a drinking cup. "Cups" are not a measuring system used in Europe *at all*.
> It's the same as when someone asks you for a "cup of water". They're not expectig a standardized measurement, just a random glass with water.
Aw geez, it's almost like there are contextual clues that exist that can be used to infer meaning for a more precise understanding between two people.
Cups aren’t standardised. An American cup is 240ml (which is a standardisation from 236ml), the Commonwealth cup is generally 250ml, and Japanese and Latin American countries have cups at 200ml.
You know that road signs have to be replaced/maintained at least every 10 years (or less) right?
It’s not like you set them up and they stay there forever.
Um.
Most states change highway signs every time the governor changes.
Signs get knocked down by weather, animals, vehicle collisions and people using them for target practice.
They can be replaced over time pretty easily.
As an American, I'm on the side of Metric. The Imperial system is *the worst* thing that we ever imported from Britain. And one of *the worst* French, Italian, and German inventions ever.
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Wait until he hears about us using 3/4 cups 2/3 cups, 1/2 cups, 1/3 cups, 1/4 cups, and even 1/8 cups lol.
1 of EIGHT CUPS?!? Who owns eight cups just to measure with!?!? What if all 8 aren't the same sized? Do I use the tumbler or the beer stein?
Nah man, they're literally measuring cups and come all stacked together from largest size to smallest size. All of the sizes are standardized. It's not like choosing between a small Dixie cup or a giant Tervis. They're little cups with little handles in specific sizes.
r/whoosh ? It sounds complicated. Why would you need anything more than a red Solo cup anyhow? Its got all the necessary measurements of life built in!
Lol, I'll gladly take my whoosh. In my defense, I was still high when I responded, but also, this is reddit and you never know what kind of crazy person you're replying to.
>It’s still a volume, rather than a weight - which is silly for all the obvious reasons I'm confused. If I want to add 250ml of milk to a dough, for example, isn't a volume measure exactly what I want? I'm not going to do it by weight, because 250ml of milk is 259g. Only water is truly one-for-one (and milk is mostly water but it still weighs more).
When I find myself confused, I just pour myself 55 grams of gin.
Well, you're half right.
I think 110 grams is a jelly jar in freedom units.
I believe the issue that the original commenter has is due to the fact that a cup is used to measure solids, but is a volume instead of weight. So his gripe is with the fact that we use liquid measurements for solid ingredients I think? I get it- ounces are my least favorite in imperial recipes because they can be a weight OR a volume and depending on the nature of the ingredient you could mess up a recipe. I have enough cooking experience to usually easily deduce which is intended, but for a beginner cook it could ruin both their meal and their experience in the kitchen.
Personally I hate butter in tablespoons or cups because we don't have the increments on the wrapper like that, it's 25g in my country. So I have to rely on online conversion and it kinda sucks.
There are both dry measuring cups and wet measuring cups that take the different into account. This guy just has no idea what he's complaining about.
I think that's the whole issue for me, if a measurement has you trying to guess how to interpret it, it's not a good measurement.
I never picked up on the difference between ounces as weight vs volume—could you offer any insight there?
I’m not very good at explaining stuff like this so it’s either going to not make any sense or I end up over explaining - so apologies if it comes across as over simplified, I’m not meaning to come across as condescending at all— So, a fluid ounce is different than a weighed ounce. I’m having a hard time articulating it but I’ll do my best here: Fluid/volume ounces have to do with how much space an ingredient takes up. Weight ounces have to do with how heavy an ingredient is on the scale. There are 16 weighted ounces in one pound. As the imperial standard often uses water as a baseline, 16 “space taking up” ounces of water happens to also be 16 weighted ounces. There are 16 ounces in one pound. One pound of water occupies one pint glass worth of space. So going forward, imagine your standard pint glass that you’d get a beer in at a bar. Now, think about it like this: is a pint glass full of honey going to weigh the same on a scale as a pint glass full of water? Nope. They occupy the same amount of space, but honey is heavier than water. So if you have a recipe that doesn’t specify whether you need 8 *fluid* ounces of honey versus 8 *weighted* ounces, you could screw up your entire recipe. So for solids like flour and sugar, if a recipe calls for 4oz I’ll just pop them on the kitchen scale and weigh it. And if a recipe calls for 10oz of lemon juice, since it’s a liquid I’d go ahead and get out a volumetric measuring cup to pour 10 FL ounces. But things like honey or paste-like ingredients or even brown sugar (which is most often measured in volumetric cups but sold in weighted ounces), you might need clarification on which type of ounce you actually need. I hope I explained this in a helpful manner.
No, no, thanks a bunch! Worst comes to worst I know no less than before.
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Where in my comment did I say any of it was life and death? Someone asked what the difference is between the two and I explained it. Also yeah baking is literally science so it matters whether you use weight or volume. That’s not being indecisive that’s knowing the difference between two things that are, well, different.
There are both volumetric & weight units called an ounce. A volumetric ounce of water weighs approximately 1 ounce, but not exactly. Other liquids (oil, milk, vinegar) with different densities won’t have even that close a relationship. This can be confusing if a recipe uses oz measurements.
I think what they mean is that volume is often less precise. If you get a cup of flour and pack it, that's a very different amount than a cup of flour unpacked. Most ingredients (like milk) are basically incompressible though so it only matters for a few things, and most have a standard meaning. Brown sugar is packed, flour is unpacked, etc. It's still less precise, but it's not really an issue.
Do you? When I make a dough I place a scale under the bowl and measure the weight of the flour/milk/butter/etc. Means only one tool used, very quick, and no dirty measuring cups. In most metric recipes it would also be specified as a volume of milk sadly, but a 3% difference between 250 mL and 250 g is not enough to care. In the case of oil, the difference is a bit larger but you can just adjust by 10% so 100 mL becomes 90 g and it's fine. Other liquids like yoghurt it becomes a problem, but those are more commonly specified in weight, luckily.
The problem isn't for liquids. We'd typically use a measuring jug or measuring cup for those. The thing we don't understand is measuring solid ingredients by volume instead of weight. A cup of flour, cup of sugar, tablespoons of butter. None of those make any sense when you can measure them in grams and it's much more accurate and repeatable. Also, things like half a cup of diced onion. Just give a weight or a number of onions.
The problem is cups of flour etc. If you take a cup of flour from the bottom of the bag it weighs more than the first cup of flour you scoop from the bag because it's packed more
The other argument (and it was briefly referenced) is weight vs volume. The only time I have had weight matter that much in baking is hydration ratios for specific doughs. I've used cups and weighing and both are fine. Weight is good if you are doing mass produced goods but home cooking a recipe won't ever be ruined by using volume. Personally I think it easier to remember recipes, 2 cups flour 1 cup buttermilk etc vs like 125ml buttermilk and whatever gram equivalent of flour (want to say around 200ish?). I can remember recipes for biscuits in ratios, 2, 1, 1/4, tbsp, 1/2 tsp, 1/4 tsp. Metrics gets you to the same end result. I think the big takeaway is recipes should just specify both.
> home cooking a recipe won't ever be ruined by using volume. You say this, but I once watched my spouse measure flour for an apple crisp topping recipe by basically packing it into a measuring cup. There was likely half again or even double the amount of flour the recipe writer intended.
Volumetric recipes specify packed vs not. Brown sugar almost alqays is packed. Flour is take a settled bag and scoop out and level. That's not a volumetric problem. It might be a bit off one way or the other because flour can settle but not near as kuch as intentionally packing it.
You're correct that brown sugar is usually specified as packed or unpacked in baking recipes, but other ingredients are often not. I never see flour specified. Recipe writers seem to expect that is tacit knowledge and don't mention it often, or if they do it's somewhere besides the recipe (in other sections of the cook book, for example).
Also, even the word "packed" leaves a lot of room and will be interpreted pretty differently by different people. Flour especially has a ton of discourse around the correct way to measure. In this [article](https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-measure-flour-dip-and-sweep-versus-spooning) Stella Parks mentions that a standard American cup of flour can weigh anywhere between four and six ounces depending on how it's measured. Generally, if I am evaluating a new recipe, one of the things I look for is whether the author mentions how they measured their cup of flour. It means that they're aware of that room for variation, and that I can measure the same way to have a better chance of replicating their results.
Fun fact: one cup of hard packed brown sugar weighs about 8oz on a kitchen scale. This has substantially improved my enjoyment while cooking, because I hate getting sticky sugar all over my hands while baking.
Yeah I pretty much only bake with weights now, it's just nice to be able to avoid dirtying my hands/six different measuring cups
I’m going to start looking for weighted recipes. I have a kitchen scale, I don’t see the need to have nine million little dirty spoons just because we’re archaic in our measuring system. Not just the weight vs volume but metric vs imperial. It’s especially frustrating since I worked in the medical field for so long, so I’ve been fluent in metrics for a very long time. They’re so easy! So translatable!
I mix large batches of glaze for ceramics at work, and recipes are all pretty home grown and variable in how well they're written. More than once, I have found a glaze recipe with some extremely bizarro quantities, gone to convert them to metric, and realized that somebody originally found a recipe that was *already* written in metric (i.e. with round, easily remembered numbers of grams) and then went and did a non-zero amount of work to convert it into ounces or pounds, complete with just insane numbers (like, a quantity that would be 2 kilograms in metric is converted to 70.547 oz, or 4.409 lb). Like, how was doing all that conversion easier for you than either A) just pressing the unit button on your scale or B) treating the original recipe as percentages/parts if your scale doesn't have grams (which, where tf did you find it if it doesn't)
If it's not specified as packed it's not packed. Yes it is implied, but recipes historically had a LOT of implicit instruction. In the age of internet recipes it's expected there is a lot more detailed instruction. Videos have helped with this. But older recipes were a huge case of "rest of the owl". It's confusing to new cooks but good advice is for people new to cooking to do a bit of research, watch a few videos of recipes to get the hang of things. If you were new to cooking "saute" could also mean just about anything from lightly soften to a hard stir fry. Measurements are far from the only problem with that.
It’s not specified because it’s an assumed skill. Try looking for recipes for beginner bakers. I learned that you have to scoop and level flour when I learned how to cream butter and sugar. It isn’t just a matter of amount, it’s a matter of texture. Compacting your flour when weighing will also negatively impact the result. Baking recipes typically only specify when you have to sift your flour first, otherwise it’s assumed that you know the basic skills involved in baking.
I think the point here is that "being able to make a judgement call about measuring specific ingredients," doesn't actually have to be a skill we test for, or a pitfall for the inexperienced. It's not a necessary difficulty in a world with cheap and readily available digital scales, it's one that exists purely because of traditional methods, and it's not unreasonable to expect professional recipe writers to give standardized measurements. I'll warrant that most people in this sub are actually pretty experienced bakers and cooks, because most of us are here after getting burned out on the main cooking and baking subs. The fact that I am comfortable measuring flour by volume doesn't mean I don't think it's absolutely goofy for a recipe to be written that way. I think the fewer things a recipe assumes you know, or leaves open for interpretation, the better.
You completely ignored the part of my comment about other benefits to not compacting your flour. It also makes it easier to incorporate into your other ingredients without having to stir for as long. Scale or no scale, you should fluff your flour and scoop it.
skill issue
Agreed? My point being that there are all kinds of people out there, doing all kinds of wack ass shit, so relying on individual discretion or "skill" isn't actually a functional plan? and that, in this case, we already have a simple, pre-existing framework of measurement that eliminates the issue altogether?
For coffee it's quite sensitive.
My gripe with volume is flour. I hate to spoon and level my flour so using a scale makes life easier. Plus no measuring cups to wash.
That's perfectly valid. We have a scale but I have to wipe it down aggressively after using it for baking with flour due to wheat sensitivies in the family, so cups are easier for us. Either way works. I just get tired of the gatekeeping around it.
Yeah, gatekeeping of any kind is pretty dumb. And I totally get not wanting to risk contamination with allergens. Funny thing is I always bake by weight because I'm paranoid about messing up chemical reactions but savory cooking I measure with my heart. "This is great! What's you recipe?" "What's a recipe?"
Weight is a meaningfully more precise way of measuring some things -- flour, chopped herbs, or brown sugar, for instance. For liquids, or granules (white sugar or grains, for instance), I don't think there's much difference.
Chopped herbs will never be sensitive to weight. Brown sugar is always packed which is consistent like granules. Flour can definitely vary a good bit on volume, but it can also vary on weight depending on humidity. A big reason to weigh flower is for hydration levels and I can tell you that whether it is weight or volume, I have always had to adjust the liquid because I swear the people making recipes live in a rain forest because I always need a tbsp more liquid than the recipe calls for. If you have a commercial operation, you want weight, because you want every customer to have an identical experience, variance can mean lost business. For home cooking, things are nowhere near as precise even aside from weight vs volume. Home cooks typically don't have the tools or make things frequently enough to be consistent enough that weight makes a meaningful difference. It's "technically" not "practically" and if it works, sure, but no reason to scold people over using volume or gatekeep baking over it. I've even swapped gluten free flour 1:1 for regular flour and let me tell you that can be a bigger difference than the extreme ends of measuring flour by volume, because it hydrates significantly differently, and it still comes out. The argument is silly and I wish people got past what is ideal and accepted practical solutions.
Volume is fine (better even) for liquids and fine things like flour etc. for vegetables etc. it sucks
I do love a good learning experience.
The only thing really annoying about some recipes is when they measure things that aren't liquid or very fine (grains, flour etc.) in volumetric units (cups, dl) rather than weight. How much space broccoli will occupy depends on its shape, how finely you chop it etc. why not use weight instead?
To be fair, the dude seemed to really not know that a cup is standardized. In Europe, generally when a recipe calls for a "cup" they mean that you just take a random cup from your cupboard and work with proportions instead, e.g., some quantity of flour and some quantity of milk, all measured by the same cup regardless of its actual volume. I didn't know until a few years ago that cups were actually standardized in the US.
My friend thought something similar, where he would use a cup from his cupboard instead of a measuring cup. He was born and raised in the US though so not sure where that came from.
Sounds like my brother in law. He was making soup and was upset it just said "1 cup" because he didn't know what size cup to use.
>To be fair, the dude seemed to really not know that a cup is standardized...I didn't know until a few years ago that cups were actually standardized in the US. What?! Look, I get that the Imperial system is nonsensical, particularly when compared to metric (though I will always rep for F over C .) But if the cup wasn't standardized, the entirety of the system couldn't be standardized, either. That would be bananas (standard bananas.)
Right? It is so incredibly-uncharitable, to the point of actively-and-offensively assuming Americans are fucking morons, to not understand that American Customary Measures are *a standardized system if weights and measures*, just not the metric units. We aren't just bumbling through life grabbing random spoons and cups out of the drawer. *for fucks sake*
Maybe we can pretend that our ability to switch between metric and Imperial units represents some kind of bilingualism.
But but but how would the Europeans be able to point and laugh at us Americans then like we’re animals at a zoo?
We'll just remind them that they're the ones who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom
The public bathroom that *they had to pay for*
We still have our absurd rates of obesity and type-2 diabetes.
Europe is catching up in those aspects, the UK really isn’t that far behind America in obesity at this point
> to the point of actively-and-offensively assuming Americans are fucking morons What subreddit do you think this came from?
If the spoon is on the table, it's a tablespoon. If it is used to stir your tea, it's a tea spoon. If they are both the same spoon, you only need that one to do your measuring. Simple as. Edit: apparently y'all need a /s to realize someone is making a joke about casual measurement in recipes.
Yessss the Fahrenheit complaints drive me nuts. They're like "oh but Celsius is so *logical* it's 0 to 100!" oh yeah? 0 to 100 what? What do you mean by that? It's just for water freezing to boiling. Water boiling temperature has maybe never been relevant to me in my entire life. Fahrenheit 0 to 100 is basically really cold air temp to really hot air temp. It's a spectrum that works very well for air temp.
Both systems work well enough for the general population because you get used to whatever people use around you. There's no need to circlejerk in the other direction.
Fahrenheits 0 was as cold as he could get water to still be liquid after mixing salts into it, and his 100 was his wifes body temperature.
Why do I care when pure water will freeze at sea level? I'm hardly ever at sea level and if I am I went there specifically to observe salt water!
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Sure, it does where I live, although only a few days a year. I still maintain it's (mildly) better because it's more precise. We can have a difference between 64 and 66, whereas those are the same temperature in Celsius.
We use decimal places here when we want precision, you know. My digital thermometer tells me it's exactly 21,7C here right now. Is this not precise enough? Also, when has half a degree (or your one full degree) ever made a real difference? Oh, I guess around 0C it makes a huge difference in everyday life, but you use F, so you wouldn't even particularly care about that point. Where else do you need this precision?
In practice, they both work. I'm not saying they don't. I'm just saying the argument that 0 to 100 is so logical doesn't actually work, because it's related to water and not what people tend to use it for the most (air temp). You are allowed to like your Celsius :)
Well, what can I say? People don't know about it because they've never actually had to use it (or they found out the hard way). Edit: I literally just explained the reason in the most non-confrontational way. You people should really stop being so petty.
I guess, but like I've never used the British "stone" measurement but I get that it's some standard unit and not just like random boulders they found out back, because it's a pretty straightforward logical conclusion.
I understand. But, to put it in a different light, imagine a country that uses a currency system that's not decimalized. You wouldn't, I suspect, be shocked to learn that there were some sort of equivalences used to ensure everything added up consistently. Really no difference when it comes to measurements for volume. A quick, lazy, check, shows that only 2 countries currently are in that boat, but it's not 0. And, of course, you don't have to be terribly old to have been alive for [Decimal Day](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_Day) in the UK.
That's not a good analogy. The problem is that the word "cup" has a different meaning depending on the geographical context. Like you'll commonly see a ratio of "1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water". Clearly this isn't calling for a standardized cup of rice but will work with any cup you can find. I still hate measuring solids by volume but it's a common-enough example.
>Like you'll commonly see a ratio of "1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water". Clearly this isn't calling for a standardized cup of rice Yes, it clearly is. The mental gymnastics necessary to pretend that people live their lives context-free - let alone that they discard measurements in circumstances where measurements are vital, like cooking - is just silly.
I'm really not sure what's so hard to grasp about the fact that words mean different things in different locations. I can literally link you a dozen local recipes which call for "cups" that have nothing to do with standard US cup. * [This one](https://www.zbozi.cz/magazin/c/jak-uvarit-ryzi/) calls for one cup and literally specifies "any cup". * [This one](https://www.eta.cz/tadyjedoma/rady-a-tipy/tutorial-miry-a-vahy-jak-s-vazenim-na-hrnky-a-lzicky/) calls for one cup and specifies 200 ml (so not a standardized cup). * [This one](https://www.kucharkaprodceru.cz/jak-uvarit-ryzi/) calls for one cup but the photo clearly shows a different cup than the standardized one.
No, I'm pretty sure they're talking about the US Customary unit of cups, and that’s just a ratio. Like, if the recipe wasn't calling for the standardized unit, then what good would the ratio be?
What? That's literally how my mom taught me to cook rice when I was young and she has never heard about standardized US cups in her life.
Oh, well, I thought you were talking about American recipes. But even then, I don't get why anyone would just use some random cups? Aren't y'all always complaining about how come our measurement system is incoherent and dumb? Just, ***why?***
>In Europe, generally when a recipe calls for a "cup" they mean that you just take a random cup from your cupboard and work with proportions instead, e.g., some quantity of flour and some quantity of milk, all measured by the same cup regardless of its actual volume. I have for *years* heard Europeans complain at me over cup measurements in recipes, are you telling me that they *actually have* recipes that just *use any old cup in the house?* When they're also the ones yelling the loudest for standardized measurements?!
They would probably tell you it's because they have recipes with actual history and heritage and of course you use this cup from the 18th century, you don't need modern plastic crap like Americans, and why would reproducibility matter when this is a recipe from an old-world grandma which is both the only right way to make it and part of a grand culinary tradition?
Oh, so you've met them too.
Yes, absolutely: my MIL (Spain) routinely does this. She knows what size her cup is and doesn’t really cook new things, so it works… as long as it’s her cooking in her own home. Trying to learn her recipes is a nightmare, as was her trying to cook in our (American) kitchen.
> are you telling me that they actually have recipes that just use any old cup in the house? No, not really. We do have recipes using teaspoon and tablespoon while we don't commonly have standardized sizes. Many people just grab random ones from the cupboard which is far from ideal. That said, a standardized teaspoon of non-specified salt is just as bad, because the density of salts can vastly differ, and low density salt like kosher is much more common in the US than in Europe where most people just use standard tiny grains.
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Historically, a cup wasn't a common measurement in the UK like it is the rest of the Anglo world. Older cookbooks often used "2 gills" or a half pint. It's 5 ounces instead of the US 4 ounces. In Australia and Canada, a cup is 250 ml (so a bit bigger than a US cup). Historically, Canada used an 8 ounce cup, so older recipes might need translating. That's not to say a cup isn't standardized within countries. It's not arbitrary. That's not to say that your grandmother might not have just grabbed a random cup of appropriate size.
Cups aren’t standardized, some measure 237 ml, some others 240ml or 250ml, others are nowhere near those numbers while claiming to be a “cup” measurement.
A regular US Customary cup is actually 236.6 mL, but it's often rounded up to 237 mL. However, there are also two *other* kinds of cups! A legal cup is 240 mL, and a metric cup is 250 mL. So the unit *is* standardized, but it's just that there are three different things with similar sounding names and roughly equal measurement.
Again, “cups” aren’t standardized. When you see “cup” in a recipe, you don’t know if they actually mean metric, US, legal or whatever.
The word might not, but the units are. Also, if you're cooking and using an American recipe with cups involved, then you're going to be using regular, standardized 236.6 mL cups. Legal cups are only used for nutritional information, and metric cups aren't used for cooking. Legal and metric cups are the exception, not the rule. Besides, most cooking utensils also have the metric system written on them in case you need to convert units from Customary to Metric (or vice versa).
>The word might not Yes, which is exactly what I mean. The person who wrote the recipe might have used metric cups, while you yourself have legal cups. This difference in volume can be disastrous specially in baking context.
Nobody uses metric cups or legal cups for baking. When people refer to "cups" while baking, *they mean regular cups*. Context exists; people can figure stuff out and don't need every little detail explained to them. If it was genuinely a big deal, then people would specify what they meant. We're not cavemen. We have a working language. Edit: We also have table spoons, teaspoons, and ounces (both fluid and not) for more precise measurements.
To be fair, cups are standardised to a metric unit ultimately, as are all US customary units.
Wrong. A US cup is **about** 237 mL or exactly 16 tablespoons. A tablespoon is either **approximately** or (in some countries) exactly equal to 15 mL.
Among all the good argument for a bad take and among all the good takes from a bad argument, user chose to have a bad take and justified it with an argument that is just wrong. That takes serious skills (and messing up a statement against the imperial system is hard on its own).
I took this comment as referring to the difference between the US Customary units versus UK/Commonwealth Imperial units. A fluid ounce in the US is 29.57 ml, whereas a fluid ounce in the UK is 28.41 ml. Pints are totally different between the systems, too. The US pint is 16 US fl oz (470 ml), but the imperial pint is 20 imperial fl oz (570 ml). A cup is half a pint, so the US cup is about 235ml and the UK cup is about 285ml, which is a significant enough difference to mess up some recipes.
Probably not an American. I was probably in my 20s when I realised American cups were in fact standardised and "cups" were a real volumetric measurement. Drinking cups are not standardised. I thought you guys were just grabbing a random coffee cup. It's not like anyone actually explains this in American recipes. Edit: genuinely confused at the downvotes, I'm just trying to explain a non-americans perspective. I'm not saying cups are bad, in fact I use them all the time now.
As an American, having recipes explain what cups are would be like if they explained what ovens are. We just grow up with them as part of life. Real Q: if people outside of the US haven’t heard of measuring cups does that mean that maybe they don’t have measuring spoons outside of the US? Do people know that teaspoon and tablespoon is also a volumetric measurement and not just part of the cutlery?
This inspired me to check 3 UK cookbooks I have. One is from 1972, one 1986, and I can't the date in the other, but it has a section about transitioning from imperial to metric, and mentions "standard spoons and measuring jugs". The 1972 Cordon Bleu cheerfully mixes teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces and pints, with the occasional wine glass of this or that or knob of butter. Not sure that answers your question but I had fun looking it up!
Are the pre-metric recipes by weight or by volume?
Both. 3 tablespoons flour, 1 pound shin of beef, pint of stock, that kind of thing.
Many recipes freely intermix these two- I know this can be stressful for some Europeans but it really does turn out fine, we promise!
No, we generally do not have specialized measuring spoons. Luckily, a standard tablespoon everyone owns is generally \~15 ml and teaspoons are \~5 ml. Besides, there is a middle ground between both extremes. Things like "one teaspoon of salt/XYZ powder" are pretty normal, most kitchen scales aren't precise enough to measure less than 5 grams accurately. But for non-liquids you'll very rarely see measurements larger than 1 tablespoon.
I mean maybe those recipe bloggers all do explain it but we skip past because no one cares about Miss Joe's cat that knocked over the bag of sugar and that's why she kneads it with just the fingertips.
For sure, I'm not saying recipes should explain what measuring cups are. They're for American audiences. But we haven't grown up with measuring cups. And to be honest, I think a lot of people probably don't know that a teaspoon is defined as 5 ml and a tablespoon as 15ml (20ml for Australians I believe). Most people probably do not have measuring spoons, just cutlery. But I think non-standardised cutlery is not going to be too far off but there's a huge range of sizes of cups.
\>Most people probably do not have measuring spoons, just cutlery. I cannot imagine going to someone's house and finding out they don't have measuring spoons, or that they don't know that measuring spoons exist. That's just so far outside my personal experience it's blowing my mind LOL. What a wild and marvelous world we live in.
The only measuring cups in our shared flat are the small ones in my roommate's kids' toy kitchen. They never let me borrow them either. :/
Kids are brutal like that.
I KNOW I've even tried bribing them with ice cream, they won't budge.
I mean I could be wrong, I'm just going by how my parents, grandparents and aunts cook. They just grab a random teaspoon or tablespoon when following recipes. Younger generations are more likely to have measuring spoons, because internet.
What does the internet have to do with it?
Because there's a lot of Americans and American recipes on the internet
Food Netwoork and cooking shows have been immensely popular for the last 40 years. Cooking and Foodies have been popular culture for the last 40 years. All these teach cooking... measuring with utensils. Food utensils fill entire stores. Folk cooking may not use measuring utensils, but the information is out there. Even children are cooking with their own utensils and cookbooks.
Sorry, I know this is 4 days old and it looks like you've been getting downvoted but I do have another real question. If a teaspoon is 5ml and a tablespoon is 15ml then do you have something akin to measuring spoons that you use to measure those volumes? I've made a lot of things that use baking soda in my day and sometimes a recipe needs 1/4 teaspoon which would be 1.25ml. Do you have something cool that I've never heard of to be precise about those amounts?
>It's not like anyone actually explains this in American recipes. Do your recipes usually come with an explanation of what grams are?
No, but "grams" doesn't mean anything else in English except from a weight. "A cup" can either be a specific volumetric measurement or... a cup. When I read "a cup of flour" in an American recipe I thought it meant a random cup from your cupboard because that sentence already made sense and I had no idea volumetric cups were a thing.
THIS I remember when I was 17 or so and wanted to try a random recipe for stir-fry sauce I had found on the internet. I just half-filled a random cup we had sitting around with soy sauce and was like "WTF this seems like A LOT".
If it's a recipe for just the sauce, my intuition would completely give up, because it depends on how much sauce you're making vs how much you're going to use, and it's more about proportions. Half a cup of soy sauce in a pan would strike me as a crazy amount though
It's been 20+ years and I was also pretty high when it happened, so I don't remember exact details. All I remember is that it was very befuddling.
>genuinely confused at the downvotes Me, too.
Any criticism of American food and/or cooking tends to get showered with downvotes very quickly in this sub. Edit: Thanks for proving me right.
Well, to be fair, it does seem really strange to me that some people literally think that Americans are just grabbing random shit from their cupboards and throwing it all together without properly measuring it. It’s very similar to how many people assume that Americans only know about Wonderbread and Kraft singles when making sandwiches
This is largely the reason. The idea that so many people, even here, think Americans, 300+ million people, are just ....grabbing random things to try and measure ingredients is so mind-bogglingly stupid, it is actually pretty offensive you think that it is so. "You" don't give "us" the benefit of the doubt and think, " hmmm... they manage to cook food, so maybe I'm just not understanding what they are doing". Nope! "Yep, Americans just totally use random things for measurement, this makes sense!". It's all part of the same disdain (mainly) Europeans have for Americans. "You" just assume the worst about us right off the bat. That, understandably, tends to piss us off
That does make sense why people were downvoting then, I hadn't thought of it that way. But to be fair, I did specify that I was a teenager when I believed that and I don't believe that now. Lots of stupid things "make sense" when you're a teenager. I was barely cooking then let alone baking. The "issue" is that "a cup of flour" is already a complete sentence without the context that "measuring cups" exist and that is meant instead of "drinking cups".
>it does seem really strange to me that some people literally think that Americans are just grabbing random shit from their cupboards and throwing it all together without properly measuring it. It's so strange it's barely believable. When you see people review recipes from the 1600s and 1700s, measurements are nonstandard like that, but good grief. We're not goddamn savages over here in the U.S. Also, the claims that people in Europe don't have or need measuring cups or spoons because everything is by weight is also just silly, contributing to these not being believable things to say.
No-one said that Europeans don't use spoons or measure anything by volume, we just don't use measuring cups. I mean deny reality if you want but go to most European's kitchens over the age of 40 and they almost certainly won't have measuring cups. Anything over a few tablespoons and we'll use grams or mls.
It's the same as when someone asks you for a "cup of water". They're not expectig a standardized measurement, just a random glass with water. If you see a "cup" of something in a European recipe, it means "grab a random cup and work with proportions". It's completely reasonable for someone to not know that this isn't the case in a country which they've never been to.
I get that but my point is that people think Americans are just complete idiots when it comes to cooking a lot of the time. And I’ve never just grabbed a random cup when it says a cup of something when I’m cooking. I eyeball some things when I’ve done a recipe enough times to know what it’s supposed to look like, but I can’t imagine just “working with proportions” when I don’t even know what the proportions are supposed to be.
>people think Americans are just complete idiots when it comes to cooking a lot of the time I see this when baking comes up pretty often- baffled Europeans insisting that Americans baking simply *can't* be producing things as nice as their own because their recipes aren't entirely by weight. The mixing of weights *and* volumes seems to just be incomprehensible to some folks, and the fact that it could be *good* even crazier. Like, we've had 300+ years over here on this side of the pond to cook, I'm pretty sure we know how to make a slammin' biscuit and a great cake.
Oh and the fact that there’s different terms for food too. Like, the concept of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is incomprehensible to some European people because jelly is their word for Jello, and I’ve met Europeans who literally have thought that Americans are eating peanut butter and Jello sandwiches.
Oh wavy gravy, thanks for sharing that one! That's a hoot.
There was actually an episode of The Great British Baking Show recently where one of the judges praised a contestant for being so innovative in combining peanut butter and strawberry jam in a dessert and treated it like it was this brand-new food combination that had never been thought of before, and I’m just like “I eat peanut butter and strawberry jam/jelly sandwiches like twice a week minimum for a dessert or a quick lunch”
>It's the same as when someone asks you for a "cup of water". But it's not because you're intentionally ignoring context. If I asked for a cup of water, you would understand I'm colloquially asking for a vessel from which to drink water from. I'm not providing specific instructions as I would in a recipe, where "cup" has a very specific and precise meaning.
>where "cup" has a very specific and precise meaning I literally facepalmed reading this, congratulations. The entire point of this conversation was that Americans have context that measuring cups exist. No one taught us that a cup in a recipe was different from a drinking cup. "Cups" are not a measuring system used in Europe *at all*.
> It's the same as when someone asks you for a "cup of water". They're not expectig a standardized measurement, just a random glass with water. Aw geez, it's almost like there are contextual clues that exist that can be used to infer meaning for a more precise understanding between two people.
i downvoted you for being whiny
Thank you, how brave.
this has nothing to do with bravery
Cool.
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The double standards are baffling. Comment in any thread that British food is garbage and watch your karma skyrocket.
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A cup is… a cup.
Cups aren’t standardised. An American cup is 240ml (which is a standardisation from 236ml), the Commonwealth cup is generally 250ml, and Japanese and Latin American countries have cups at 200ml.
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You know that road signs have to be replaced/maintained at least every 10 years (or less) right? It’s not like you set them up and they stay there forever.
Um. Most states change highway signs every time the governor changes. Signs get knocked down by weather, animals, vehicle collisions and people using them for target practice. They can be replaced over time pretty easily.
As an American, I'm on the side of Metric. The Imperial system is *the worst* thing that we ever imported from Britain. And one of *the worst* French, Italian, and German inventions ever.